


unspoken but unforgotten

by chuchisushi



Series: howl [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Remix, Shinobi culture and all it implies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-26
Updated: 2014-01-26
Packaged: 2018-01-09 21:28:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1150984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chuchisushi/pseuds/chuchisushi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He teaches more than they dare hope they remember.</p><p>Written for howl AU, but can be read without background knowledge of said AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	unspoken but unforgotten

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Never to be unlearnt](https://archiveofourown.org/works/126359) by [anenko](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anenko/pseuds/anenko). 



Kakashi watches Iruka teach and wonders how more people don’t see how strong he is.

Kakashi reads Iruka’s lesson plans and leaves graphic stick figures or snatches of landscapes from his memory drawn in the margins, lines from Icha Icha and stupid thoughts that would make Iruka smile when he turned the page to them. Kakashi vandalizes Iruka’s lesson plans and class notes with impunity and delight, because he cannot be with Iruka all the time, every day, so he leaves his marks how he can in all the different ways he can.

He also _reads_ said lesson plans.

 _He_ knows what shinobi are. _Iruka_ knows what shinobi are. Iruka’s darling students, who occupy a place in his heart that is populated only by Iruka’s other precious people, _don’t_.

Iruka’s darling students never see the days when Iruka comes home and just presses his face into the curve of Kakashi’s neck and hides from what he’s expected to do for a while, because Iruka’s teaching is something like a mission and shinobi are supposed to not show their emotions when out in the field.

“We went over the central rules,” he says one day. “We discussed the Will of Fire,” another. “The oldest girls got to the sex and sexual assault module of the seduction mission unit today,” he says, once, then doesn’t speak for the rest of the night. He holds Kakashi too-tight when they go to bed, utterly silent, leaves his fingertips bruised into Kakashi’s shoulders, and Kakashi is just as quiet, pressing his chakra close to the ebb of Iruka’s as they lie awake, waiting for the sleep that may or may not come.

Both he and Iruka know what it means to be a shinobi, to live as a shinobi, and Kakashi doesn’t know how Iruka can face those enthusiastic declarations from his students and their siblings about how they want to be great ninja one day!

(“I feel the worst about the civilian parents,” Iruka whispers into Kakashi’s collarbone one night, voice solemn like he’s imparting the very secrets of the universe to Kakashi’s skin. “Because they have no idea what it means. They let their children go to a school to turn them into Konoha’s future soldiers; if their children graduate, they disappear into missions, live lives that they can’t talk to their parents about because there’s nothing they can relate to, nothing they can say that doesn’t stumble up against hidden, unspoken hurts that are just truths to us.”

Kakashi thinks of Sakura, who’d been barely a teen when they’d been attacked in Wave, and how she’d witnessed death that day and how her parents would likely never understand what it was like to watch the light leave someone’s eyes and know that you’d caused it.

He tucks Iruka’s head underneath his chin and doesn’t say anything; Iruka exhales tiredly as though he’d understood anyway.)

But Kakashi reads Iruka’s lesson plans and listens to his classes and can thus pick out all the little contradictions he weaves into his words: ‘a shinobi must show no emotion,’ but ‘we each live by our Will of Fire, that passion that burns within us and allows us to continue’; ‘the completion of the mission precedes all other objectives,’ yet ‘your teammates are the most valuable and treasured things you have; keep and preserve them’; he teaches them how to silently assassinate practice dummies, but takes them on nature walks and rewards the students that spot the most living animals; ‘if you are determined, the only limit to your own strength is your ingenuity,’ even as he warns them for the millionth time that being a shinobi is dangerous.

And he repeats his points over and over and shows them in a hundred different ways that they can do _anything_ with the help of their friends, their faith in themselves, and just a pinch of luck, and Kakashi knows that when they graduate, they’ll be shinobi and start to learn that being a shinobi is sweat and blood and tears, broken bones and broken hearts, and far too much death of body and soul--but maybe, even then, they won’t give up, because Iruka will have taught them all they know and, even more valuable, given them a belief in themselves that lets them persevere against all obstacles and bend the very world to their will.

 _And that_ , he thinks as he tightens his arms around Iruka, relishing the bedrock of his solidity, _is why he’s so beloved._

**Author's Note:**

> Writing and editing OST:  
> Mumford & Sons – Lovers' Eyes  
> Mumford & Sons – Not With Haste  
> Mumford & Sons – Below My Feet  
> and of course, thanks to my beta, end1essly, for reading this over uvu


End file.
